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Dedicated to Max Brauer and the members of the AFL-CIO
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he
–Alfred Hayes
There are many versions of this song, one by Joan Baez used in the movie of Hill’s life is especially moving, but there is only one definitive recording and that is the one sung by Paul Robson, whose other-worldly deep bass voice seems to come from a higher place.
I thought about Robson and Joe Hill and a lot of others today: Labor Day. Most of all I thought about my brothers and sisters in the labor movement, for without their efforts I probably would have never been born.
The tale starts with my grandfather, a labor organizer in Germany who worked as a teenage glassblower before he caught the attention of the Social Democratic Party. He rose rapidly through he ranks and in the 1920s became mayor Altona, a Hamburg suburb and labor stronghold. The municipal reforms he pioneered put him in line to become mayor of Berlin, which back in the 1920s also put him in line to become chancellor.
Then came Adolf Hitler. As one of Hitler’s most outspoken opponents my grandfather was condemned to death in 1933. My aunt walked by the gallows they were building on her way home from school. After a harrowing escape worthy of a spy novel, my grandfather worked for the League of Nations. Then the Nazis closed in on him as World War II loomed in the background.
My father told me how he and my grandfather were in an apartment in Paris when he saw one of the stereotypical Gestapo men complete with black leather trench coats coming toward the building. He told my grandfather they had to go out the fire escape. When my grandfather retorted, “They can’t arrest me here,” my father answered, “They’re not coming to arrest us.” The French did imprison my family for several weeks, threatening to return them to Germany, but in the end pressure, much of it from the labor movement, resulted in his release. At that point my family knew their only chance was to try to come to America.
Back then you needed a sponsor to get you in. The Rabbi Stephen Wise, one of the great men of the last century, was one who stepped forward–because my grandfather had spoken out forcefully against the persecution of the Jews. But Rabbi Wise was not the only one who stepped forward, so did AFL. Without these sponsors may grandfather probably would have been shot or worse (one favorite Nazi torture was to hang “traitors” from a meat hook). So I owe my life to organized labor.
I thought about all this yesterday when I did my periodic check of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In this climate of bs and raucous indignation that reminds me of a flock of ravens fighting over road kill, some of us sometimes seek the solidity of numbers to provide perspective. In late January the BLS issued its most recent periodic report on union membership. For those who bothered to read it or even managed to catch the small box-like articles that a few newspapers printed about the report, it made for sobering reading on this Labor Day weekend.
In America these days, press releases tend to fall from the air like dead leaves, most of them so dry and desiccated that their words sound like feet scuffling across a late October forest floor littered with fallen reminders of the past. The release from the Bureau on January 25, 2007 seemed yet another nondescript addition to this pile, right down to its generic format and matter-of-fact headline, probably written by a staff member buried deep amidst dozens of coffin-like cubicles who had grabbed a piece of stationary and filled in some boiler plate prose from the network hard drive.
“UNION MEMBERS IN 2006,” it read. It then went on to note,
In 2006, 12.0 percent of employed wage and salary workers were union members, down from 12.5
percent a year earlier…The union membership rate has steadily declined from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available.
The language may sound dry, but like a forest littered with dead leaves they have the power to become a conflagration if someone touches a match to them. They point to a serious American crisis, one that for many may kill the American Dream and this nation’s ideal of a level laying field.
The release “highlights” state:
Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly five times that of private sector employees. Education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate among all occupations, at 37 percent.
The unionization rate was higher for men than for women.
Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.
What the press release refers to as “highlights,” record one of the most dramatic shifts in American culture, economics and politics since the beginnings of the union movement during the industrialization of the 19th century. In these numbers it is difficult to find the old stereotypical union member–a blue collar worker in a steel mill, mine or automotive plant. Instead the many union workers are teachers, a government employees, police officers. The BLS also pointed out, “The union membership rate for government workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than for private industry workers (7.4 percent).” Almost half (42%) of all local government workers are unionized.
The conventional arguments for this immense shift state that industrial workers are no longer interested in unions or that the economy has changed to a service, technology-driven environment far different from the one that spawned the old craft unions that were the heart of Samuel Gompers’ original AFL. Yet the unions themselves point out that independent surveys and data show most workers would join a union if they could. One reason may be that BLS stats in that January press release show union workers:
Had median usual weekly earnings of $833, compared with a median of $642 for wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions.
The major force preventing brother and sister workers from joining a union lies with the GOP Counterrevolution, which has identified busting the unions as a major priority. After all bust the unions and you’ve carved the heart out of the Democratic Party. How have they done this?
Mainly they have made it harder to form a union. A September 2000 report by a respected international organization makes this nation sound like a third world plantation. In Unfair Advantage: Workers� Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards,which was based on an 18-month survey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that in the United States:
Workers’ freedom of association is violated routinely, protections for workers forming unions are inadequate and enforcement of existing laws are much too weak.
The report’s online introduction lays out the grim realities of American workers:
A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. All that awaits an employer determined to get rid of a worker who tries to form a union is a years-later reinstatement order the worker is likely to decline and a modest back-pay award. For many employers, it is a small price to pay to destroy a workers’ organizing effort by firing its leaders.
The result of this assault is that union membership in the private sector is the lowest since 1900. That was when my grandfather was a teenager! I wonder what my grandfather’s fate might have been if union membership had been that low when he applied for exile in this country?
When my family arrived in this country, the AFL and union locals helped provide them with income. In part because of union support, my grandfather became a highly visible figure in the exile movement.
Immediately after the end of World War II, the AFL would pull some strings to get my grandfather a visa to return to Germany, ostensibly to investigate the status of the labor movement. After a fiery speech in Hamburg, the people asked him to stay and become mayor. In the Hamburg historical archives is the document where he reclaimed his German citizenship. You can see where he forcefully inked out the Nazi swastika that was still on all government stationary.
Hamburg was virtually reduced to ruble from the numerous bombing attacks on Germany’s main seaport which also served as one of the home U-boat ports. I remember traveling to Hamburg as a boy and seeing the remains of these submarine “pens”–huge slabs of concrete cracked and scarred by bombs, but still intact.
The bombings prompted the British to give the city the nickname of the “Hiroshima of Germany.” The most notorious of these raids was Operation Gomorrah which firebombed the city in 1943, incinerating eight square miles, killing at least 50,000 civilians (the immediate death toll of the Hiroshima bombing was 70,000) and leaving over a million homeless. The firestorm created winds of over 200mph that literally sucked people from their shelters like a hellish tornado.
My grandfather told me when he returned, some people were literally living in caves carved out of the rubble. He presided over the rebuilding of the city, became active in urging the formation of what became the European Union and worked tirelessly for nuclear disarmament. Thousands lined the streets for his funeral. Willy Brandt, his long-time friend, gave the eulogy. Today among other things a major street, a school and the Social Democratic Party headquarters in Altona are named after him.
I relate all this not to hype my grandfather–something that were he alive he would severely reprimand me for–but to show the impact of the American labor movement on history. My life and those of my family are not the only ones saved by organized labor. The number of workers who owe their lives to reforms and rights won by unions over the hundred-plus years they have existed is staggering. Each of those lives saved also have gone on to have an impact on their communities and this country.
That is why those union membership figures so depress me today because those workers who are unable to join unions because of the Counterrevolution also could become lost lives. Lives lost perhaps because of inadequate health care or unsafe working conditions. Live lost because of arbitrary layoffs and lower salaries.
Given the Bureau of Labor Statistics unionization percentages I wonder what kind of life my grand father might face were he to be a teenager today rather than 1900? Instead of being a glassblower he probably would be working in some type of service job–the stereotypical burger flipper, maybe.
Service jobs are notorious for discouraging unionization attempts. For example, there are tactics Wal-Mart has used to keep out unions. The United Food and Commercials Workers site has several documents it was able to obtain from Wal-Mart that detail its anti-union stance. One for managers begins:
The information contained herein is highly sensitive and intended for management’s use only.
And just what is that sensitive information? The meat of it is in a section titled “Management may take any of the following actions during an election campaign.” Here is one example that shows how the deck is stacked. Managers may:
Enforce rules requiring that solicitation of union membership or discussion of union affairs be conducted outside of the time during which associates are actually performing job duties. But remember, both union and non-union solicitors must be treated alike.
Discuss union matters with an associate or small groups of associates,
even on company time, at the associates’ work station, in the cafeteria, or at any other neutral spot.
In other words, unions may not speak to workers on the job, but management can. Imagine you are working as an “associate” and you are approached in the middle of a shift by your boss who tells you what he thinks of unions. Would you vote to join?
Without organized labor to nurture an ambitious young man as it did my grandfather, what would be his future today? We have a picture of him at a labor conference just before World War I. He is the youngest by at least a decade, in part distinguished by the fact most of the older men have mustaches. He looks a bit stiff in a formal suit. Today that picture might never take place.
I shudder to think of millions of young men and women growing up in 2007 rather than 1900. Obviously, the world has changed since 1900. Probably the most dramatic difference between the two eras is better health care. Young people also have more access to education.
Yet with the tightening of student loans one wonders if the education door is closing, at least for those who cannot get scholarships. As for health care, there is little question the general quality of care in 1900 was primitive, but if you are poor, as my grandfather’s family was, it is questionable how many of those modern advantages are open to you because you probably do not have insurance.
Even more ominous is the study by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Picketty which has been cited by this site. What they found is best explained in their letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Our work has shown the top 1% income share has increased dramatically in recent decades and has reached levels which had not been seen since before World War II and even since before the Great Depression when including capital gains.
So our income disparity does look a lot like what it was when my grandfather was a teenager. It certainly presents a fascinating parallel that income disparity and the percent of union workers have both declined to near 1900 levels. Whether there is a valid correlation between the two would take more study. Yet the parallel is not merely a sad comment on our times, but it is an outrage to know how far our country has slid backwards.
My grandfather once told me the labor movement is the backbone of democracy. If the majority of us who work for a living do not have representation we have less influence and with less influence we have less power. Like the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life which shows how the fate of one town might have been different if one man had not lived, without the intervention of organized labor Hamburg and Germany would be different today and I would not be writing this.
The least I can do is to say, “Thanks!”
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